I am a bad and unclean person. I am a hypocrite. I have a confession to make. I am now on...dum dum dum...FACEBOOK!!! AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHH!
Re-read my first post. Then re-read the above paragraph. Make sure you then pick up again at this sentence, or you may find yourself on an endless loop. Anyhow, forces have collided to make this happen. Kind of like those two satellites that just crashed into each other. Highly unlikely, yet it happened.
Here's the deal; I saw Dan's Facebook profile over his shoulder the other day. I saw people that I haven't seen or thought about in over a decade that I actually really liked. I thought, "I wonder how he's doing?" or something like that. Stupid, innocent satellite #1. The other satellite in this collision? I have a master plan. You don't know it yet, although maybe you do. It depends on who "you" are. I will let you know soon, but here's why I can't: not enough people read these garbage (and so you know, garbage is code for wildly entertaining musings). How do I get more people here? You guessed it - FACEBOOK! Yeah!
So I signed up last night. Then I turned off my computer and the light. It is at this precise moment that I felt (with my entire being) like I had made the biggest mistake of my life. And I forgot to turn off email notification of Facebook activity, so I had 30 new emails this morning. Neato.
The fun was just beginning. Facebook has my favorite feature that I can't seem to turn off. Instant Messaging. People know I'm there, and want to make small talk. (Disclaimer: I really like all of you that want to make small talk. Otherwise, would we be "friends?"). But IM is anything but instant. It's why Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone - waiting for all the dashes and dots was not getting it done anymore. There needs to be a "my turn" feature or something. Because without it, conversations go like the following sample:
Someone else: whats up trent
Me: Not much, how have you been? (An aside: even in IM I prefer proper capitalization, spelling, grammar, and so on. Why? OCD)
Someone else: good ive been maried for a year now
Me: That's great. How'd you meet your wife?
Someone else: and i have a pet alligator
Me: Whoa! Why? Why exactly?
Someone else: working at Vona's
Me: Who is it, do I know her?
Someone else: ive always wanted an alligator for some reason
Me: (Computer is now off, and I'm smashing it with a hammer so I don't ever have to have another circular conversation again as long as I live. I would honestly rather write a letter, put it in an envelope, stamp it, place it on my mailbox, wait 5 days for it to get to New York, wait 3 months for exotic pet guy to get around to responding to me, and the 5 additional days for his letter to arrive in Eugene.)
I've got to go to bed now. Bye.
Someone else: see ya
Me: Good night.
And so on.
And one more thing. I am not afraid to admit that I am overwhelmed. Part of signing up is searching for "friends" as determined by my email contacts. Then I have invited a lot of people to pick me or treat my like the fat kid in a gym class draft. Well, in the world of Facebook I am thin and athletic. They ALL picked me, and then some. Now I have over 40 "friends" and messages from these people and pictures and little chat boxes popping up and I don't even have my blog address on there yet. I want to say "hi" to everyone, but I'm on business people! Let me figure out how this works first. Give me a grace period. But alas, no.
I feel like I'm stranded in the desert, when finally a clear spring appears just over the dune. And as I approach the water (which is real!), I lean down to take a drink. Anticipation makes me salivate for the first time in days as I reach down to scoop up that first glorious handful of water. And then I am hit, square in the face, by a 3-hour locust storm. I cannot move forward to save my life, and my only hope is that a bit of water will remain when this hell is over.
Is there water left? I'm not sure yet. I'm afraid to go back. But please, if you are my "friend," would you tell your other "friends" to check out my blog, enjoy it, "follow" it, and comment frequently. I'm afraid I don't have the heart.
The sooner you visit, the sooner my project will be underway.
Exotic pet guy, oh my god! Hahahahaha. You are hilarious. At least you're the thin and athletic guy in gym class though...I would comment longer since I just cracked up a lot at this but it's 2:47 a.m. I love funny blog. Hopefully there's some water for ya there in the morning. I'll promote your blog a little for you.
ReplyDelete-Mel
Very funny! I just went on Facebook this week myself.....something I never thought I would do but someone asked me so......
ReplyDeleteKeep up to great posts. I really enjoy them.
Maureen
I didn't give your sample facebook dialogue appropriate attention in my first comment.
ReplyDelete"You: Whoa! Why? Why exactly?"
That whole sequence was excellent (ixcellent! Yis!Indeces). The lack of proper grammar annoys me also. I have sadly resigned to not capitalizing anything most of the time. I can't really give up the apostrophe though. Or sentences that make sense. Somehow I haven't had any IM conversations until about three weeks ago with facebook and I've had an account for a couple years. I have literally talked to Heidi, Dan, and you. I think it's a new thing on facebook. IMing sucks away the soul. Haha.
You are very funny most of the time, but when you rant about stuff it hurts my abs.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI find this post especially funny because I happened to IM you the first night you signed on to facecrack evven though I much prefer email type messaging. I have never once had as satisfying an IM experience as say simple email, yet I for some unknown reason find my self compelled to respond/chat with someone. I am always left feeling a little empty inside like I just woke up in some gutter punks studio apartment after a cheap one night stand. Anyway The funny thing about facecrack IS all the people from that past that pop up. I have lots of friends and family on facecrack that I would consider myself close to currently. But it seems like there are so many people that I have added out of guilt, ease, or some weird high school like thing that it is beyond ridiculous. I think I have 90 friends. 90 friends? Really? So the chick from High School I had one class with and never really connected with then...were "friends" now? And you probably have not experienced all of the stupid time wasting little applications that people send you like, "smiles", "tatoos", "which 80's movie are you" the list goes on and on. It CAN be overwhelming if you feel the need to respond The entire thing is very amusing to me in spite of or perhaps because of this. If people think I am rude for ignoring their poll about what flower defines my personality or who I was in a past life so what? I use facebook like my own personal whatever I want it to be and that works for me. I own it and if I don't want to respond to something then I don't. I do enjoy your sarcastic and wry appraoch to this subject. Keep up the good blogs. I'll IM you....mwah ha ha ha ha
I am very annoyed that I posted the above comment without signing in first! I am also very annoyed that I did not fully proof read my first comment a little better before posting. I can normally spell a bit better than that. So I just had to comment again, it's part of my obsessive/compulsive personality. My Australian brother-in-law has a talk radio show and corresponding website that he tries to get as many hits on as possbile. His facebook strategy is kind of funny. Under the picture tab it says "check out my fiveaa website for pictures", under the info tab he has very limited information and he only posts information that directs people to his website. He is shameless about it and it's great!
ReplyDeleteOh - Husband. As I've said before I never talked to you about my face book finds and I expect you to follow by the same rules. We will not be spending countless hours together discussing random people that each other doesn't know. Got it! It's kinda like dreams - there really only interesting to the people who have them and no one else:)
ReplyDeleteWith love -
your wife